The bovine threat to airplanes

last updated 8 January 2015

Nigeria

Adekunle Adekoya

Nigerians don’t just have to worry about terrorists bringing down planes, said Adekunle Adekoya in Lagos’ Vanguard. Now we have to worry about cows. Last week, a herd of cattle wandered onto the runway at Port Harcourt just as an Air France flight from Paris was landing. The plane plowed into seven cows, crushing them all and skidding off the runway. We can thank God that nobody was hurt. But how could the airport manager let such a thing happen? “Do people take their jobs seriously in this country?” It’s not as if livestock hadn’t already been identified as a hazard. “I can swear it wasn’t the first time cows breached airport perimeters” in Nigeria. Our “national embarrassment” is all the more acute because this week was supposed to be a milestone for Nigerian aviation, with the launch of a new national carrier, Virgin Nigeria. Instead of celebrating, though, the government was forced to apologize for the cattle incident and then close the main airport in Lagos for repairs. “How do we hope to attract and sustain tourist inflow with this kind of attitude to infrastructure?”